


To Feel

by enthusiasmgirl



Series: The Five Senses [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blindness, Childhood Trauma, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:50:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3865846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthusiasmgirl/pseuds/enthusiasmgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because of Matt Murdock's heightened sense of touch, sometimes he feels things very differently than other people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Floor

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second in a series of stories exploring Matt's heightened senses and the way they each impact his life, but it can be read on its own because all of the stories stand alone.
> 
> If you find the first chapter unbearably depressing, please know that it gets much, much happier as it goes along.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Matt's dad died, it felt like everything could only get worse.

The thing that stuck with Matt the most was how it felt. The feeling resonated in his fingertips and wouldn't go away. He rubbed them together and scrubbed them clean under hot water again and again, and even sucked on them hoping that he could replace the tingling sensation, the sense memory that lingered and stayed with him through everything.

It was there while he stood solemnly in the cemetery on a crisp summer morning, his dress shoes and cane sinking slightly into the muddy grass, trying to imagine what the sight of his father's casket being lowered into the ground in front of him looked like. It was there while all of his belongings were packed into two small suitcases and an old dusty chest as the once familiar house around him was emptied of everything else by neighbors and members of the church. And it was there on that first, terrifying night at St. Agnes. As everything moved in slow motion around him like a strange dream, he could still feel the clammy coldness of his dad's skin, the way that the blood had matted in his hair, and the terrifying place on the man's forehead where the hard bone yielded and became a pulpy mess of mangled flesh and brain matter.

As he lay there on that first night, he felt it and he made a choice. He let all of the pain come rushing in. The floodgates opened and he felt the tears begin to flow, and in that moment, it was as though all of his senses opened up and swallowed him. He let himself feel everything, hear everything, smell everything, taste everything. He held nothing back. He blocked nothing out.

The sounds of the neighborhood at night became a maddening cacophony. Police sirens. Car alarms. Running, shouting, drunken revelry. It was all happening at once, and it gave him a terrible headache.

His nostrils flared as smells assaulted him unrelentingly. Rotting food and garbage from the dumpster below his window. The stench of sewage creeping up from under the city. A dead animal lying in the road. Chinese food from the restaurant a block away.

It was enough to bring vomit and bile up slightly before he swallowed it again, and he could taste that too. It was absolutely disgusting.

And his skin was exploding. He could feel the humidity of the hot summer night sticking to him like he was in a sauna. The air blowing in from the open window didn't help because anywhere it blew across him felt like being in the middle of a tornado. His cotton pajamas scraped anywhere they touched him like sandpaper, and the sheets below him were worse still. Underneath it all, the springs in the mattress dug into his flesh like he was laying on a bed of nails. it was torture.

And despite the intensity of everything else he was experiencing, behind his eyes there was still a void of nothingness.

Gasping, he rolled over and off the bed onto the old wood floors of the room and landed with a bruising thump on his stomach. The wood felt as hard as cement. He placed his palms on the floor intending to push himself up, but gave up. Instead, he examined the floorboards. They creaked underneath him. He could feel every crack, every nail, every splinter and every piece of dust on his fingertips. But, he realized, something was missing. There was no sensation of skin, or hair, or viscera. There was only everything else, an entire world on fire.

So he surrendered to it. And everything hurt. And he didn't know if he wanted it to stop hurting. 'It's better this way,' he thought.


	2. Outer Beauty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy was right to call the one time he let Matt touch his face weird. But it was also a bonding moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't personally ship Matt/Foggy. Any subtext you read into it is your own, but feel free to let your imagination run with it if that's what makes you happy.

"Someone's at the door," Matt said from where he lay propped up in bed with his book in his lap.

"How could you possibly...?" Foggy said from his position on his stomach on his bed, arms propping him up and television blaring in front of him. His question was interrupted by the sharp knock. "You know," he said to Matt as he turned off the TV and stood up to answer the door, "Sometimes I wonder about you. It's like you've got superpowers or something."

Matt smiled at that. If only Foggy knew.

He knew it was a woman because he had smelled her perfume. It was particularly strong, and mixed with other smells of makeup and hair products. It led him to believe that she was probably very feminine looking, and possibly very good looking.

He knew she was good looking when he heard the way that Foggy's heartbeat picked up when he saw her, and smelled the sweat that flooded the man's palms. It always amused him when Foggy teased him about his ability to detect hot women, because his friend had no idea that he functioned as Matt's hot woman detector. It made him an excellent wing man in more ways than one.

"Ummm," Matt heard Foggy say. "Wassup? I am... Foggy. That's me. Can I, uh, help you with something." 'Smooth,' Matt thought. He could practically picture the way that Foggy was leaning against the door frame trying to look more relaxed than he was.

"Hey," said the woman, with an accent that placed her as being from Southern California. Matt was very good with accents. "My roommate and I were wondering if you had any milk we could borrow. We ran out and I'm totally desperate for a coffee."

"Milk?" said Foggy, "Yeah, for sure. We have some. Just give me a minute. You can come in if you want though." Matt heard her come in and shut the door gently behind her as Foggy moved towards their mini-fridge and opened it.

"I'm Lisa, by the way," said the woman. "Hey." There was a short uncomfortable pause.

"Oh, Matt, she waved at you," Foggy said after a moment. "Matt's blind, so he didn't see."

Matt couldn't gauge the woman's reaction to that news, but smiled and waved back anyway.

"Awww... that's so sad," Lisa said. Matt immediately disliked her, as he disliked most people whose first reaction on finding out he was blind was to express pity or not properly acknowledge him in the room. Just because he was blind didn't mean he was broken.

"But it's so cool that you, like, live together," Lisa continued. And even though Matt hated being pitied, he saw an opportunity to be as good a wing man to Foggy as Foggy was to him.

"It's very cool," said Matt. "Foggy is a pretty great roommate. He's so patient and really helpful when I need anything."

"Awww," said Lisa again, like Matt had just told her Foggy rescued baby birds and saved babies from burning buildings. "That's so nice."

"Yeah, well, you know," said Foggy as he brought the milk over to her, "It's no big deal. That's just the kind of guy I am."

Lisa went to leave with what she came for, but Foggy stopped her. "You know, Lisa, we have coffee too. You're welcome to stay and hang out if you want. Or we could go out! For coffee, I mean. Then you don't have to feel like you owe us anything for letting you borrow the milk," he said.

'Oh, brother,' thought Matt. At least he had tried to help.

"Oh, sweetie," Lisa said, pity returning to her voice. "Ewww."

Matt had disliked the woman before, but now he had to refrain from getting up to personally escort her out of the room.

"I mean, you're nice and all," Lisa continued, "But just... ewww." Matt heard her leave and close the door behind her.

Matt swore that he could sense Foggy's heart breaking a little. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't 100% sure what just happened.

For a moment, the room was silent and uncomfortable.

"That was rude of her," Matt finally said.

"Sure," said Foggy.

"It was!" said Matt, disbelieving the resignation he heard in his friend's voice. "And it's her loss."

"You don't know that," said Foggy.

"I do," said Matt.

"No," said Foggy, "you don't." Anger was creeping into his voice.

"Foggy..." said Matt, but he was interrupted.

"Just stop!" said Foggy. "Stop pretending that we're the same, alright! We're not!"

Matt didn't understand why Foggy was so upset and he told him so.

"Remember when we first met?" Foggy said. "I was excited you were my roommate because we could go out and meet women together, like we both could help each other. I was wrong to think that. Because all that's happening is that having you around looking like you look is just making me feel really shitty about myself. That's what that was about, just now. She saw you and even though the blind thing freaked her out, she was still giving you googly eyes. I had no chance there."

"I didn't know she noticed me that way," Matt said. "She didn't even say two words to me. And I tried to help you out."

"That's right, you did. And that's the problem. You think you can actually help. You can't see, so you don't know, but I'm not an attractive man. I'm short, I have a body shaped like the friggin' Pillsbury Dough Boy, and I don't have much going for me in the face. Funny, sure. Nice, absolutely. But that reaction, that "Ewww" just now? That's what women think when they look at me."

"I'm sure that's not true," Matt said.

"See, how could you possibly know that?" Foggy asked.

"I..." Matt started, but then realized that he didn't have an answer to Foggy's question.

"You don't know," said Foggy, "because you live in a wonderful fantasy world where looks literally don't matter. I'm sure being blind sucks, but that part must be nice."

"Honestly," said Matt, "I never thought about it before. But I suppose it is."

"Yep," said Foggy, flopping back down onto his bed and turning the TV back on.

Matt thought about what Foggy had said. There was some truth in it. Matt knew that people were shallow and that looks mattered. He couldn't not know that because he existed in the world just like anyone else. But he was, in some ways, isolated from it, both because he was blind but also because he knew he was good looking. Other people made a point of telling him so. But he didn't know what Foggy looked like. He had never actually seen the man. It hadn't struck him as strange before, because he had been blind for so long that he was used to not knowing what people looked like. But now that he was thinking about it, it bothered him a little.

"Could I..." he began to ask, but suddenly wasn't sure how to ask what he needed to without making things uncomfortable. "Could I touch your face?" he finally asked.

"What?" asked Foggy, surprise and confusion in his voice.

"You're right," Matt said, "I don't know what you look like. There's really no way for me to know. But if I could touch your face I could get a sense of it, maybe?" He wasn't sure what he was even doing. He never really touched people's faces when he met them, not the way that he knew some other people without sight did. It always felt like a strange thing to ask someone, and he had never really felt the urge to be that intimate with anyone before if it wasn't sexual. He expected Foggy to say no or think he was crazy.

"I guess," Foggy replied, doubt creeping into his voice. "I mean, that's a thing blind people normally do, right? I think?"

"Yeah," said Matt. "Sure."

Neither of them moved for a moment. Awkwardness permeated the room.

"Are you gonna...?" Foggy said as Matt said "Did you want me to...?"

"I'll come over there," Matt said. He got up and made his way to the bed, and sat down next to Foggy, reaching his hand out.

"I might need you to guide me. I don't want to accidentally poke you in the eye or something," he said. This had quickly gotten way weirder than he had originally intended.

"Okay," said Foggy. He took Matt's hand and moved it up to his forehead.

Matt placed his fingertips on his friends head and began to map what he felt, moving down Foggy's forehead and over his eyebrows, down to the bridge of his nose. The silence was almost painful as he went. Finally he reached Foggy's lips, then his chin.

"You have a beard?" Matt said, surprised.

Under his fingertips, he felt Foggy laugh. "Sorry," said Foggy. "Yeah. You didn't know that?" He was clearly surprised.

"No," said Matt. "I never really pictured you with one."

"What?" asked Foggy. "How did you picture me, exactly?"

"I don't know," said Matt, moving his hand back up the sides of Foggy's face to his ears and running his hands along them. "It's hard to describe really. You have long hair, too?" He tugged a bit on Foggy's hair.

"Ummm, yeah! It is only just now occurring how messed up it is that you don't know this stuff. Not just about me, but about everyone. That's so weird!"

"It is," said Matt, and he finally moved his hands back into his own lap. "Hey, what colour are your eyes?" he asked, suddenly curious.

"Brown," said Foggy.

"And your hair?"

"Like a light brown, almost blonde I guess?" said Foggy.

"What do you weigh?"

"I don't want to talk about it. Chubby. Which I'm living with. I used to be a fat kid, so I'm alright with where I am now. You can feel if you want," Foggy replied.

He took Matt's hand and ran them up and down his sides for a moment, and Matt continued his exploration up his arms.

"Do you want me to do you next?" Foggy asked, a joke to diffuse the tension. "Just for the hell of it."

Matt laughed. "I think I'm good," he said. "Thanks, though." He got up from the bed and went back over to his own, picking his book back up.

"Oh, and Foggy?" he said.

"Yeah?" Foggy asked, rolling over back onto his stomach in front of the TV.

"You didn't seem that bad looking to me," Matt said, honestly. "No hunchback or unibrow or anything. So maybe stop being so hard on yourself. You'll meet someone who likes you for you."

"Aw," Foggy replied, laughing a little, "Thanks, Mom." Matt threw a pillow at his head with surprising accuracy, and things went back to normal.


	3. The Calm Between Storms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen is depressed by the terrible weather, but enjoys spending it with Matt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, ship it if you want but I take no credit for what your imagination does.

The bell dinged as Matt and Karen exited the bodega, stepping out onto the noisy streets of Hell's Kitchen. It was a dreary Thursday afternoon, and it had been raining on and off all day. Matt could hear the sounds of car wheels sending puddle water splashing onto the sidewalk, the steady dripping of water falling from awnings and balconies, and the rush of eavestroughs carrying water off of roofs and onto the city streets.

"Ugh," said Karen, opening her umbrella and holding it up over the two of them as they walked back towards the office. "It's so awful out today. I hate it." It had been raining every day for the last week and a half.

"Well you know what they say," said Matt, "April showers bring May flowers."

"In this neighborhood? April showers create dirty brown puddles full of wet garbage. It's so gray out. I miss the sun."

"Gray doesn't bother me," said Matt, smiling. "Believe it or not, I love this weather."

"What?" Karen asked, laughing, "Why?"

"It's hard to explain," Matt said. "I just like the way it feels."

"The way it feels?" Karen asked. "That's interesting. How does it feel?"

"Like there's a charge in the air. A sort of static electric crackling, a tingling feeling. Pressure building and building and then finally being released. It's cathartic in a way. And the feeling of rain, especially on a humid day, is fantastic. The way it cools you off and settles into your skin and clothing makes me happy." Matt let out a contented sigh at the thought of it.

"I've never thought of it that way before," Karen said.

"Storms, though," Matt continued, "those are my absolute favourite."

"Yeah?" Karen asked.

"Yeah," he said, linking his arm in hers affectionately. "Torrential storms. The kind where the sky opens up and it feels like the wrath of God, like a flood could happen. The kind of storm that makes everything feel damp and heavy, even if you're indoors. With thunder that rolls across the city in an angry wave and echoes on and on, and rain that pounds down on the sidewalk so fiercely that it drowns everything else out and scatters all of the people. It's beautiful."

"You're not scared of lightning?" she said.

"No," Matt said, "Just sad that I can't see it."

"Well, I am terrified of it," she told him. "When I was little girl I used to run into my parent's bedroom and try and bury my head under the blankets anytime a storm happened."

Matt laughed. "Call me the next time. I'll come over and protect you, and in return you can describe it to me."

"I'd like that," Karen said, smiling. "You know what," she said, "since you made it sound so nice..." She folded up her umbrella, and they walked arm in arm together, wet and earning strange looks from the people around them. But Karen knew that Matt didn't care, so neither did she.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a Tumblr, which can be found at http://enthusiasmgirl.tumblr.com.
> 
> Comments, especially insightful or helpful ones, make me a better writer so please feel free to leave your thoughts. :)


End file.
